Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
